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Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

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Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#52
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People just love to talk about how horrible the US healthcare system is but my disabled daughter has never paid a dime for care in her life (in Kansas, of all places!) via Medicaid. Even her birth was free due to retroactive Medicaid. Her 9 months in the NICU was billed at over $2 million. Thanks taxpayers. I was having chest pains last week and got triaged within minutes at the ER. I’m pretty sure I “owe” them $500…

So socialised medicine works?

[deleted]

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#53

What if the government allowed private enterprise to open emergency clinics in times of great need? There are probably a lot of people who would be willing to pay out of pocket for medical care, especially in an emergency, if it meant getting seen sooner.

Emergency care specific private enterprise seems incredibly predatory. I also wonder where the infrastructure and staff for these surge clinics would come from.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#54

I don't have time to go in depth on this but I'm a bit skeptical of the claims here After adjusting for age, the english excess death rate is 5% above. It is the highest. But it also just came from being the lowest several months ago. How much natural variance is in this data. Is this moment noteworthy? Is it possible we're not seeing more people die sooner but rather a large chunk of people putting off death a few m…

> This does suggest the general problem is really that we don't know where to put all these incapable poor health old people.

This has been the case for years: there are plenty of people who should not be discharged home to fend entirely on their own, but there's no social care in place to look after them, so they aren't discharged. This is also technically the responsibility of the local council rather than central government.

During the pandemic there was almost unlimited money available for Test and Trace, some for the entirely temporary "Nightingale" hospitals, .. and basically no effort to increase staffing levels or solve the social care issue.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#55
post #47

For those not from the UK there’s a wider narrative at play here. Any and all government bashing is almost a national sport and pastime at this stage. Throw in some numbers to try to prove your point and you’re going to be well received. So there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Perhaps this Twitter chap is talking rubbish too. For the record not saying our government is perfect but holy heck it’s hard to keep up…

"This Twitter chap" is a journalist at the Financial Times and is a senior fellow at the London School of Economics. He's not just some rando bashing government...

Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Authority

I would trust a rando more than a journalist these days

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#56

What if the government allowed private enterprise to open emergency clinics in times of great need? There are probably a lot of people who would be willing to pay out of pocket for medical care, especially in an emergency, if it meant getting seen sooner.

The USA have tried, it doesn't work. People still wait hours and hours in the ER. They just have to pay thousands for the privilege.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#57

For those not from the UK there’s a wider narrative at play here. Any and all government bashing is almost a national sport and pastime at this stage. Throw in some numbers to try to prove your point and you’re going to be well received. So there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Perhaps this Twitter chap is talking rubbish too. For the record not saying our government is perfect but holy heck it’s hard to keep up…

> Any and all government bashing

They're doing incredibly badly despite friendly press support, are leaderless after the misconduct got too much even for the Tory party, and are facing some really serious problems this winter if energy prices match projections. In the meantime they waste time on culture war nonsense. They're not being bashed enough.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#58
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the US healthcare system is already collapsing" What do you mean by this, specifically? People not having insurance? Increasing deaths inside the hospital? Large numbers of people turned away from emergency rooms? I'm questioning this because with the exception of malpractice, the U.S. healthcare system seems to be working quite well, despite the large numbers of uninsured and those who cannot pay. I just don't buy…

About 10% of Americans don't have medical insurance. That number has been fairly stable for several years, so it's not great but also not a sign of collapse. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-11-17-cdc-reports-uni...

Isn't that 10% stat potentially hiding issues of co-pay, deductibles, network range, and actual level of coverage?

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#59
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they voted for first past the post!! In my opinion that was the defining moment that cemented the UK's decline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...

I voted against an Alternative Vote, I do support Proportional Representation.

Well then we got neither. That was a once in a generation vote, holding out for a better option was a very bad idea.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#60
post #13

Canada is having the same issue with 20hr waits in the emergency room and others being rejected outright https://globalnews.ca/news/9066662/emergency-rooms-canada-bi... I’ve heard a big part is all the doctors have been going on vacation all at once now that COVID is largely over, after not taking them for two years. They don’t have enough staff to cover even partial shortages. That plus the elephant in the room of p…

As always, it very much depends. We just went to the emergency room and experienced less than 30 minutes of wait time.
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